Samantha Crain has shared the next track from her forthcoming new album, “A Small Death”. A highlight of the full-length record, Pastime is streaming now with an accompanying video.
“A Small Death” is released on the 17th July via Lucy Rose’s newly formed independent record label, Real Kind Records.
Pastime is the fourth track to be shared from Samantha’s new record, and follows the release of Holding To The Edge Of The Night, Garden Dove and An Echo.
Samantha explains:
“It’s interesting how I find myself in almost the exact same spot today as I was when I wrote the lyrics to this song almost three years ago.
“When I wrote the song, I was living a quiet life (without the ability to play instruments and perform), and spent my time talk-writing poetry into a voice recorder, reading, walking, watching birds. My life now, with travel restrictions and social distancing, has taken on a similar shape of pause. I felt, then, like I was getting to know myself from scratch, peeling off a costume that I was put in as a child and allowing myself, for the first time, to dress myself and fully lean into my curiosities and sensitivities.
“This song phrases that journey as the excitement of the giddy and audacious stages of a new romance because I truly felt (and still do) in that way about finding these new facets of myself.”
Samantha directed the video for Pastime herself. She provides some context here, “The video (shot back in January 2020) was meant to be a celebration of the community of the town I live in, Norman, Oklahoma, as well as a nod to the capture of improvisation. Spontaneity is often forgotten as a great tool and teller of stories and I wanted to have a day of filming the wonderful people in my community remembering and exercising the flustering and freeing practice of “just winging it”.
“One at a time, we would have people come onto our set, alone, having not heard the song, and not having much of an idea of what I’d be asking of them. We had a few props laying around and we’d play the song and I’d just say “do whatever you feel, respond to the song, respond to me, respond to yourself, just wing it for the duration of the song”.
“A Small Death” heralds a fresh new era for Samantha Crain and a hard-fought victory in her relentless battle against illness and injury that at one stage suggested she might never be able to hold and play her guitar again. It makes for an emotionally-charged, richly-textured record, underpinned by Samantha’s poetic way with words and expressive means of delivering them. The album is self-produced.
You can find out more about Samantha here www.samanthacrain.com
